Quotes of the day

posted at 10:41 pm on November 13, 2013 by Allahpundit

Margaret Davis of West L.A. voted for President Obama and appreciates the ideas behind the Affordable Care Act. She agrees that everyone should have access to healthcare and no one should be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

“I’m a 55-year-old woman in excellent health and have a catastrophic health plan,” she wrote recently to Obama and California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. “I am completely happy with my plan. I received notice that the plan is being canceled and that to stay with a “comparable” plan my premiums would increase 88%, or $200 extra per month. To add insult to injury, the plan is INFERIOR to my existing plan.”

***

It’s true, as many have pointed out, that the raw number of enrollees matters less than the composition of the risk pool. What’s most important is that the program attracts a critical mass of young and healthy individuals — estimated by the administration at 40 percent — to offset the costs of covering older and sicker Americans, particularly those with pre-existing conditions…

It’s also important to remember that for the program to be truly viable, exchanges not only have to hit that critical mass nationally, but each individual state must have the right balance of enrollees. If 40 percent of the enrollees are young/healthy nationwide, but they are concentrated in a small number of states, then the individual market could still collapse in the others.

According to HHS, about 52,000 people signing up for plans — or nearly half the national total — came from New York and California. By contrast, Texas, Florida and Illinois (which have roughly the same population when combined) had fewer than 8,000 signups. South Dakota and North Dakota had 58 and 42, respectively.

Persistent technology problems plaguing the Obamacare signup process has created further concern that the only individuals willing to go through the arduous process for buying insurance thus far are likely to be older and sicker participants and those with pre-existing conditions.

***

As I remember it, the Democrats on Capitol Hill got the bill they wanted. They were heady, back in the majority, with a new and popular president, and they didn’t much care about GOP support. They wanted the credit: It was their bill. They wrote it in a way no Republican could support. And they got no Republican support. When Paul Ryan, who had emerged as the Republican point man, attempted to come forward with ideas, he was rebuffed.

The new president—and this was a key historic moment—decided not to act on the accumulated presidential wisdom of the ages, which is: Get the other party in on all big things. Give them a stake in it, use them for cover, show you have bipartisan juice, that you are truly national and not only the leader of one party, show you can wield your mighty power across the aisles. Get them bragging they passed it, with your leadership. Make them co-own it so that when certain parts don’t work, and certain parts won’t, they have deep motives to help you fix it.

Before the government shutdown in July, as the defund push from Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee was just starting to gain steam, Speaker John Boehner laid-out his preferred Obamacare strategy to House Republicans in a closed-door conference meeting, telling them the GOP could repeal the law with “targeted strikes that will ultimately dissolve the Obamacare coalition.”

This morning, in another conference meeting, Boehner reminded his colleagues about that strategy and explained how bringing the “keep your plan” bill introduced by Representative Fred Upton to the House floor Friday fits into it.

To their credit, House Republicans – led by Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton – are planning to pass a bill this week that has the potential to help millions of people who are now in the impossible position of holding soon-to-expire insurance with no good options for replacement coverage. And it would do so by providing an escape from Obamacare, not a fix for the fatally flawed legislation…

At the same, the Upton legislation is not a panacea. It provides no guarantees, and it certainly doesn’t try to force insurers to reopen cancelled plans like the bill sponsored by Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu. No matter what House Republicans do at this point, there will be some casualties from the Obamacare train wreck. But strong support for the Upton bill would show voters that Republicans are doing whatever they can to minimize the casualties.

The defenders of Obamacare know full well that the Upton legislation represents a serious threat to the viability of the law. It would provide a lifeline for a viable insurance market outside of Obamacare’s rules and suffocating structure. Millions of Americans would flock to a revitalized insurance marketplace that offered lower premium products with better coverage. The end result would be one more step toward fully reversing the catastrophic mistake of Obamacare.

***

As for Landrieu’s bill, if Republicans can’t successfully argue that Congress has no constitutional power to compel commerce (the basic point of the successful — in that vein — challenge to Obamacare under the Commerce Clause), if they can’t argue that Congress has no power to compel anyone to sell an insurance plan, or, by extension, to compel a doctor to see a patient, etc., then we’re in sad shape.

Obamacare made millions of people’s plans illegal. By passing the Upton bill, House Republicans would be striving to make them legal again for the next year. If insurers nevertheless choose to stop offering those plans, it will still be Obamacare that set that trend in motion. What’s more, the GOP would then be free to criticize those insurers and remind voters that, over the next decade, Obamacare would funnel a stunning $1 trillion from American taxpayers, via Washington, to insurers (according to the Congressional Budget Office). Meanwhile, Landrieu’s bill is more of the heavy-handed, coercive model of government that gave us Obamacare to begin with, and Republicans should say so.

Finally, Landrieu’s bill would undermine the Obamacare exchanges at least as much as Upton’s bill would. So the Democrats certainly don’t love it, and it’s highly unlikely they would ever pass it. But if they did, and if the House and Senate ended up reconciling Upton and Landrieu in conference, the clear loser would be Obamacare — whose exchange population would just have gotten older, sicker, and costlier.

And then around October 2014, all of those notices about losing your health plan because of Obamacare would start being mailed out again, just in time to help voters make an informed choice on November 4.

***

Without intending it, Kingsdale has, I think, identified a central source of Obamacare’s problems: The people who created the program had no idea how it would be put into effect. They just took it for granted that the law would be implemented and perform, more or less, as intended. This attitude blended carelessness, ignorance and arrogance, reflecting a broader problem in business and government.

There’s a class structure to huge public and private organizations. One class — usually the leaders of enterprises or departments — might be called the Pontificators. They enunciate broad, often-worthy goals and values. President Obama (indeed, almost any president) ranks as the Pontificator in Chief. In politics, elected officials and pundits (people like me) are lower down on the Pontificator scale. In business, these people cluster in the executive suites.

But most workers belong to the Plumber class. They’re the fix-it folks. They’re supposed to put the Pontificators’ pronouncements and commands into effect. Never mind that these demands are often impractical, inconsistent or uninformed because the Pontificators have only a sketchy notion of what the Plumbers do or what the real world requires.

“We have not just Obamacare unraveling, not just the Obama administration unraveling, not just the Democratic majority of the Senate [unraveling], but we could be looking at the collapse of American liberalism,” Krauthammer told Bill O’Reilly Tuesday. “Obamacare is the big thing for them. The biggest in a hundred years.”…

“This is a moment where we have to be calm. We have to understand what holds us together on the right. We have to watch and explain why the failure of the left is happening. And if we do that, we will win,” he said.

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she…is not trying to win our fight…
shes just a TV Host…
she doesnt have any power
we dont vote for her
she cant just grind ppl…or they stop showing up…
look how many run from Bills show and hes not all that tough…
she need…guests …thats what TV is…if you gave Coulter or MM the 9pm FOX spot i could see your point..

going2mars on November 14, 2013 at 1:23 AM

I disagree. When she tries her weak soft approach, it’s dull and uninformative TV, and completely wastes my time.

Plus, to a lesser informed viewer it c/b confusing. I’d cut his mic, tell him what I’d want, or ask him, then turn his mic on for a time. He could leave if he wanted to. He is worse than his brother…some standard.

She does better with other guests and she’s pretty attentive to them. He doesn’t deserve respect since he displays none. It’s absurd that Faux tries so hard to invite so much scum, of late. Mostly when I even bother to turn them on, I have to switch them off shortly after.

……I heard that….I meant it, too – when a woman gives you the gift of her love, and the gift that you can taste on your tongue the next day and all of the other sensory cues that flash those sensory lights on when you think of her and she’s not around…..well, THAT is a gift that ONLY a woman can give – and only if she chooses to…….and when she chooses you – it’s a High Mass for the senses that works a Transubstantiation that rings throughout time……….

That gift makes Life worth Living……

….which is not to say that I didn’t get some nice Bootlegs along the way…..but – different conversation..

This ( reconfigure, etc.) is the stand they’re taking. It doesn’t matter what the reality is… they call the shots.

Either the government makes them ‘reconfigure’, etc., in which case we have a federal government on a par with Venezuela, and, as we know, the feds don’t cede back power once they have it…

or, they go with what they have…. and Obama steps in with a ‘plan’ from the feds to ‘cover’ all those people who will be without coverage until such time as Obamacare can be brought online and get those people new plans… in which case you have the feds one dangerous step closer to ‘single payer’ when they declare that Obamacare can’t possibly be ‘fixed’.

and your show would be of TV in a week…
as no guests would put up with that…
also..
what is “dull and uninformative TV” to you
might not be to a LIV…they need news slower..smaller words..
you and i know all this and were ready for Impeachment..
but the LIVs….not so much…
to them we still have to prove the man willingly lied…
her show targets alot more to the middle than we are….because
thats where the masses are…ratings..!!!

“It’s absurd that Faux tries so hard to invite so much scum, of late.”
Schadenfreude on November 14, 2013 at 1:33 AM

i think its great to see full on Libs in all their grand display..
helps remind some what pure evil looks like…
most americans have no idea what Zeke’s all about…
who knows maybe we will see one Self- immolation one day..
that would make some great tele…
maybe one will slip…and say who knew what when where and why..

and your show would be of TV in a week…
as no guests would put up with that…

going2mars on November 14, 2013 at 1:38 AM

This is a falsehood.

You don’t seem to be taking into account that there’s a middle ground between all-out clobbering and touchy-feely niceness – most guests don’t need to be controlled like her retarded one tonight…

She does better with other guests and she’s pretty attentive to them. He doesn’t deserve respect since he displays none. It’s absurd that Faux tries so hard to invite so much scum, of late. Mostly when I even bother to turn them on, I have to switch them off shortly after.

Last November 06 was a bad night but the only consolation was the inevitable fall from grace and the hope that Obama would face the agony of one day having to sign the repeal of his legacy. That day seems a lot closer now.

“I’d cut his mic, tell him what I’d want, or ask him, then turn his mic on for a time. He could leave if he wanted to. ”

this is “middle ground”..??

like i said no guest would put up with that…
and i still say that..

going2mars on November 14, 2013 at 1:56 AM

You are misunderstanding me.

If I had a show like hers, I realize that I generally wouldn’t need to cut off the mic on my guests, because most of them would be mature enough to avoid the situation. For the occasional moron like Emanuel, bet that I wouldn’t hesistate to take the control I needed. And if people like him didn’t like it, I wouldn’t worry about it!

The alternative is to let them ramble & obfuscate, and I am not passive enough to let that happen on my watch. :)

This ( reconfigure, etc.) is the stand they’re taking. It doesn’t matter what the reality is… they call the shots.

Either the government makes them ‘reconfigure’, etc., in which case we have a federal government on a par with Venezuela, and, as we know, the feds don’t cede back power once they have it…

or, they go with what they have…. and Obama steps in with a ‘plan’ from the feds to ‘cover’ all those people who will be without coverage until such time as Obamacare can be brought online and get those people new plans… in which case you have the feds one dangerous step closer to ‘single payer’ when they declare that Obamacare can’t possibly be ‘fixed’.

thatsafactjack on November 14, 2013 at 1:35 AM

.
No, they don’t call the shots – they are already highly regulated because they have too frequently “thrown their weight around” and engaged in price fixing, etc.

The “government” at a state level STILL has the power to make them “reconfigure” just as they have for decades. The Most Corrupt Administration Ever aka the SCOAMF Administration is what they see as their BEST opportunity to join the privileged ranks of the “Too Big Too Jail”.

The “uninsured” were frequently people who did not WANT to pay for insurance – this is one of the key points that has been made AGAINST Obamacare.

“Pre-existing conditions” will result in higher insurance costs but reinsurance pools are just ONE of the means of addressing that problem without the Federal government stepping in.

“Single payer” is going to disappear as a bogeyman either in the near term or no later than next October. People have woken up to the fact that under Obamacare,

“You can’t keep your doctor.” and are ROYALLY pissed off.

Single payer translates into “You can’t see ANY doctor for 3 – 6 months.”

Any politician trying to sell that load of BS is going to end up wearing the latest in tar and feathers.

tell you what…when you get a big time 9pm show we’ll know for sure which was the better way….hows that..

she was tougher than the LSM and that where FOX plays it…
when you buy the network we can change that..
but FOX thinks its ratings speak for themselves…
moving more right is not going to add to the numbers..

…..I have another strategy that you could employ – I call it “The Hot Lead Bath Gambit”

…..When a guest – say Bill Maher or someone like him, is on the show and says something REALLYOBNOXIOUS – you’d press this button and 25,000 gallons of molten hot lead would just DROP out of the ceiling on them!

Can you IMAGINE the shrieks and screams?! Now – THAT’s entertainment…..and you’d only HAVE to do it ONCE – you wouldn’t CARE if they “never came back on the show“…….

I’ve got this OTHER idea…..see – you’d have this phalanx of cross-bowman crouched behind the host’s desk…..and……

tell you what…when you get a big time 9pm show we’ll know for sure which was the better way….hows that..

she was tougher than the LSM and that where FOX plays it…
when you buy the network we can change that..
but FOX thinks its ratings speak for themselves…
moving more right is not going to add to the numbers..

going2mars on November 14, 2013 at 2:28 AM

You are making excuses for what I saw as a weak performance on her part, to which I gave her a ‘C’.

Dumb@sses like Emanuel, who are operating like reptiles, are not open to reason – disbelieve this all you want, and I’ll just laff as I see you fail to move the ball while you are on offense!

you are wayyyy out there …
i am not failing to move the ball ….anywhere.. by watching a FOX show…
its TV….television….
not tea party tv,,,its FOX…the man that owns it can run it any way he sees fit..
anything to the right of CNN is viewers…viewers is money…
and i am not winning or loosing or moving the offensive ball anywhere by simply watching….
i dont own the network…..
i cant change it to your liking…
i am sorry…
when you buy it…’move the ball’ your self…

i simply said the woman tried to use honey…
im sorry that upsets you….i dont run the network…
so your yelling at me is useless..

Absent in Mr. Milbank’s essay is the 800 lb gorilla in the room—a half a billion dollars spent, and a website that (after building it for over two years), is the epitome of what a federal government can create, a dysfunctional system, (designed by an inept company with questionable capabilities), and overseen by a department of bureaucrats who currently refuse to take any responsibility for the site’s dismal functionality. Millions of Americans, (who have suddenly been kicked off their health care plans), are asking why they can’t even log on, and get through a process to possibly find coverage for themselves and their families. Is it too much to ask the architects of the site why, (after this huge taxpayer funded investment), and when the system is expected to work properly? Is this story the typical liberal tactic of when the message is provided, (pointing out major flaws in a screwed up system, that still might have serious security doors open to hackers), the only remedy/solution is to attack the messenger? As this whole malady of ObamaCare implodes on its own fruition—of fatally flawed written legislation never read—I would suggest the Kangaroos were the Party that wrote this bill, passed this bill, and now have to live with the reality of its own demise. The “court of public opinion” will carry far more weight here than Mr. Milbank’s displeasure with Darrell Issa, who is doing the job he is required to do, that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party apparently didn’t do—“find out what’s in it.” The ultimate irony is, nobody likes it, and they don’t want to keep it. ~ Rovin

I’ll expect to be removed from the Post’ commentary abilities any day now.

The only salvation for dems now is Repeal. Anything else tells us they are lying about changing their minds on ZeroCare. It cannot be fixed.

dogsoldier on November 14, 2013 at 7:02 AM

It really is hard to see a way Obamacare can be fixed. And every day that passes millions are losing their insurance while thousands are finally able to enroll in Obamacare.

The biggest problem, though, has been there all along. The math.

Had the website and enrollment gone smoothly they might have been able to get away with it but now there has been way too much time and discussion about the fact that the whole system is built on pushing healthy people off of affordable health insurance into far more expensive plans for no other reason than to finance the health coverage of some less healthy parasite who pays little or nothing for the exact same coverage.

I loved the exchange during yesterdays Congressional hearing with the IT “team” for Healthcare.gov. A Congressman asked if the website was going to be fixed by November 30th. The response he got was that they were working very hard. To which the Congressman said that when he was doing web development he said the same thing when he knew he was going to miss a deadline.

The only way to fix Obamacare is to put it in front of a death panel and kill it. Then, figure out how to help the people that have been royally screwed over by all that has been going on these last six weeks and come up with reasonable reform for the rest of us including the uninsured.

Odds of being able to do any of the above about nil because of a certain lazy stupid rat-eared narcissist who is politically killing his party members off by his actions (not that there is anything wrong with that).

Margaret Davis of West L.A. voted for President Obama and appreciates the ideas behind the Affordable Care Act. She agrees that everyone should have access to healthcare and no one should be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

But here’s the problem:

She knows firsthand, as the new law of the land rolls clumsily into being, that it’s not working out to everyone’s advantage.

“I’m a 55-year-old woman in excellent health and have a catastrophic health plan,” she wrote recently to Obama and California Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. “I am completely happy with my plan. I received notice that the plan is being canceled and that to stay with a “comparable” plan my premiums would increase 88%, or $200 extra per month. To add insult to injury, the plan is INFERIOR to my existing plan.”

That’s absurd. Nothing has occurred with Obamacare up to this point but the enrollment process, which should be the easy part. We haven’t even gotten to the point where the system is supposed to be working (i.e. providing affordable health care).

And the real problem with Obamacare, other than the math, is the public outrage about not being able to keep their doctor/plan and the sticker shock. The generic Republican on the ballot erased a nine point deficit in the course of six weeks- coincidentially the same period of time the focus has been on Obamacare. If you’re a Dem that outrage is about 110% of your problems these days!

Cpt Charles… this maybe the squirrel the dems/lsm will use to avoid talking about obamacare….. is this a smart move now?

Let obamacare suck up all the oxygen for now

cmsinaz on November 14, 2013 at 7:44 AM

Impeachment can’t be the squirrel because it is a slow process that will take weeks if not months. The Dems don’t have that kind of time. If true, the real difference is that the lazy stupid coward doesn’t have the clout to protect Holder the way he once did. Using political capital to stave off impeachment would take away from the defense of Obamacare and Amnesty. Holder may just be expendable at this point.

HN gibbsy was never the smartest guy in the room…. he’s desperate to cover Obama

cmsinaz on November 14, 2013 at 7:53 AM

Gibbs wouldn’t even be the smartest guy starring in a one-man show.

But have you noticed how lame the defense has been. Probably because Obamacare has become indefensible.

Juan Williams was out there last night claiming that Obama was not talking about those affected by the individual mandate when he made those promises about keeping your plan and doctor. He was only talking about those covered by employer-provided insurance. How lame is that?

a full airing of F&F would have an interesting impact on the Hispanic vote…

CPT. Charles on November 14, 2013 at 8:02 AM

That it would. But I really think that Holder would suddenly decide that he needs to spend more time with his family before there were any legal proceedings. If there is a legitimate impeachment movement afoot (and that generally doesn’t come from a guy who has less than one year in Congress) it is because the GOP smells blood in the water and are attacking.

Speaker John Boehner laid-out his preferred Obamacare strategy to House Republicans in a closed-door conference meeting, telling them the GOP could repeal the law with “targeted strikes that will ultimately dissolve the Obamacare coalition.”

Ha ha ha. Now that’s funny. Of course we hear that now that Obamacare is imploding. I was willing to bet big money that this ‘scoop’ was printed by a RINO mouthpiece and sure enough it was.

Can’t stand Erick the Red, but someone sent me this this morning and I thought I’d pass it along:

Yes, It’s a Trap.

Since yesterday afternoon a bunch of good Republicans who’ve decided to put their faith in the man who banned the incandescent lightbulb, have been telling me how wrong I am for thinking the Upton Plan is a trap…

I’m a student of right/left brain thinking. Look at the photo with something covering the right eye and see the expression in the left eye. Then, cover the left eye and see the expression in the right eye.

Two completely different expressions. One is full of rage; the other is confused and surprised. Confusion is the result.